


Misc SASO Fills

by stephanericher



Series: SASO 17 [15]
Category: Free!, Love Live! School Idol Festival (Video Game), Princess Nine, ROBOT x LASERBEAM (Manga), 弱虫ペダル | Yowamushi Pedal
Genre: F/F, Gen, M/M, Other, Selfcest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-03 23:04:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 10,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12156630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: SASO fills, BR3-7, non-knb, not long enough for their own fic





	1. seira/yoko, bodies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> br3. for green

“We make a pretty good team,” Yoko says, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “Even if I’m the one who carries your weight.”

Seira snorts, but she’s not going to get into it right now, not when they’re waiting outside to get into the billiard hall and Yoko’s got on pants she’d practically ripped putting on (Seira had laughed and Yoko had tried to kick her off the bed, as in literally--at Seira’s golden legs, which is a little bit unfair regardless of how Yoko claims that nothing’s fair that Seira does too because everything is her best feature, which is absolutely not true considering the way these pants show off her ass even better than baseball pants). She lets her eyes drag over and around, Yoko’s waist, hips, thighs, settling right on her ass.

She’s definitely moving it more than usual when they walk in, but Seira doesn’t mind the view.

“This seat taken?” Seira says, sitting in between two middle-aged salarymen at the bar.

They’re losers, but they’re just the warmup act and quantity matters just as much as quality in the games she plays with Yoko (not that Yoko can do better than Seira can in terms of either--please). Seira squeezes her breasts together just a little bit, and both of them are staring down her shirt.

“Can I buy you a drink?” says one of them, the other shooting him a glare.

“By all means.” She eyes the cheap domestic lager in their pint glasses. “Whatever you’re having.”

The man she looks at glows with her attention; Seira tosses her hair and catches a glimpse of Yoko across the room. She’s chatting up some biker chick--boy, does she have a type or what?--and, well, she’s easier on the eyes than these two but it’s going to take Yoko a while (no one ever said Yoko wasn’t ambitious, or stupid). She turns back when the bartender plops the beer down in front of her and takes a sip. She won’t be halfway through before she has them in the palm of her hand.

-

They dump the bodies in the incinerator, charred remains to be discovered a long time later, when all traces of their own DNA is gone There’s blood flecked on Yoko’s top; she’s always so messy about it but in the dark it’s harder to see.

“You could just take off your top,” Seira says.

“You wish,” says Yoko.

Her comebacks are the worst; Seira doesn’t even bother telling her. They watch as the salaryman’s chubby fingers sink down, the smell of burning wafting into their noses. Yoko steps back.

“We don’t want to smell even more like smoke,” says Seira. “Come on.”

Yoko slides her hand in Seira’s; it’s warm in the cool night air.


	2. koharu/nene bittersweet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> br3

It ends bittersweet, like biting into a bar of baking chocolate and thinking it’s semisweet when it’s really 99% cacao, the taste that Nene can’t erase from her mouth, covering her taste buds, blocking her, stuck in her mind. Maybe it doesn’t end, because there was nothing really that had ever begun, nothing to signify either way, just fraying like a worried end of a string, the leather ties on Koharu’s old baseball glove (Coach has to drag her out to buy a new one because she keeps saying she will, and she makes him run over it with his car to break it halfway in; Nene tries not to think of it as a metaphor).   
  
She knows she can’t get anywhere thinking of Koharu like this, Koharu with her mighty swing and quick reflexes and bad haircut, Koharu who loves baseball so completely that it’s not fair of Nene to want to take up space in her heart. And so she tells herself not to feel those feelings, buries herself in shitty comics and avoids the twist of unrequited-but-not-really, a trope so common in fiction, maybe just as wish fulfillment. And Nene’s feelings fall away, petals on a dead flower; but there is still space where they should be. She feels the space in her mouth, like the space in front of her teeth after she’d gotten her braces off, space for the bitter taste to crawl back.  
  
She takes the score in a neat line on the card, pretends she’s not spending more time on Koharu’s stat line, the batting average that rises like a gull on the sea breeze, a comparison Koharu would laugh at if Nene had made it because that’s probably not how gulls work in real life, so Nene doesn’t make it. She turns away, busies herself with tracing over the numbers of the positions, erasing and rewriting so they fit better in the tiny little boxes. She tugs at her skirt. She smiles at Koharu when she scores, the streak of dirt from her slide at the plate halfway up her sock.   
  
“Nice hit you had.”  
  
“Thanks,” says Koharu, with a grin, and it craters Nene’s heart that ti doesn’t crater her heart.  
  
It’s odd to think about, that she misses wanting, the thrill of knowing it will never happen but entertaining the thoughts too much anyway. Shouldn’t it work the other way, her assumptions just building? But then again, she’s basing it all on fictions, assumptions faultier than a three-run lead in the seventh with the heart of the opposition’s order coming up.


	3. mao/ryo, fight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> br3

They fight. It was stupid of Ryo to think they wouldn’t, to look back on her foggy memories of her own parents’ marriage, idyllic in her head, and think they had never fought. And it was stupid to think that she and Mao, who had never really fought before, would continue their smooth sailing on the cautious seas and get somewhere. The thing is, they hadn’t fought because they’re both too passive; they both tend to let things slide and keep them in; they focus on the positives and sometimes that’s good. Sometimes it’s helpful, but sometimes the resentment builds like plaque on teeth not cared for. They hadn’t fought as friends because they’d treaded carefully around serious issues, backed off when things got too heated, put their relationship (friends, batterymates, teammates) above their own opinions.  
  
The deeper the waters of their relationship get, the worse it gets; the harder it gets to hold everything in. Ryo is strong; she’s built up muscles on her shoulders from hard training and she’s carried weights less than physical since childhood, added to them (captain, face of the experiment-turned-success that is Kisaragi Girls’ baseball) and shifted everything around on her shoulders until she could walk without a struggle. Things add up, even though they shouldn’t, Mao cleaning the stove while Ryo’s practically still cooking and the way she always has to have everything perfectly arranged, the windows she leaves open in the winter and the way she makes a big deal about saving money. Ryo’s not a money-waster, but sometimes Mao makes her feel like she is or like she’s spending more than they have. It makes her want to lash out, but she doesn’t; she leaves her mess out longer just because she can, waits for Mao to clean it because she knows she will. It’s playing dirty, maybe, definitely, and Ryo’s not sure when this became about winning, when this had stopped being her and Mao against the world and started being her against Mao.  
  
The only thing she does now is cry, but never where Mao can see her. The weight of Mao’s arm is heavy on her shoulders, heavy with all she doesn’t deserve, all the things she’s done to Mao. The arguments they haven’t had, the wars waged under the table, underhanded (she’s no softball pitcher, no windmill motion, and yet, this). So, as has become usual between them, Ryo turns away, cries to the window, lets the tears not fall between them.


	4. izumi/kanako, gala

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> br3

The strain on their relationship waxes and wanes like the moon in the sky; it’s a comforting thought. The moon goes away, but it will come back soon, sooner than Kanako realizes. She’ll see it half-full in the sky when she’s on her lunch break, the glance up from her medical textbook ever so brief. And then it will hang full and heavy when she walks home from the library at night, steeling her body against the bitter fall air.   
  
“Are you coming to the gala?” Izumi says, voice scratching on the phone.  
  
Kanako wants to tell her she’s sick and she shouldn’t; her body needs to rest up for tennis and baseball (she’s still crazy enough to try and do both; she’s still good enough to excel at both) but Kanako’s hand closes tighter around the phone.   
  
“I wasn’t planning on it, but I can fit it in,” Kanako says.  
  
“Good,” says Izumi, and even though she probably isn’t Kanako imagines her smiling.   
  
They never go to these things together but they always manage to meet, Kanako slipping away from her dad (giving him something else to talk about with his friends than having them ask her all about school; she knows he’s proud but this is a little bit ridiculous) and finding Izumi, entertaining her fans or politely warding off unwanted interest (romantic, business, something else entirely; everyone wants Izumi and Kanako can’t blame them) or talking baseball with Hiroki. It’s always easy to slip off after that, though the crowd, hands oh-so-accidentally brushing as they keep close or as Izumi grabs a flute of champagne to hand to Kanako.  
  
The moon is nearly full over the garden, its circle slightly imperfect; the murmur of voices dissipates in the still air, and the browning grass stays quiet. Kanako shivers, and Izumi drops her shawl over Kanako’s shoulders. It’s gauzy, decorative, impractical; it smells like Izumi’s perfume. Kanako feels warmer already as she pulls it over her shoulders (it doesn’t go at all with her own green dress, slinkier than she’d like but still modest, a purchase egged on by Izumi that Kanako doesn’t regret).   
  
“You’re still a little sick,” says Kanako.  
  
“I’m fine,” says Izumi, and then she sniffs and clears her throat. “I don’t have a fever.”  
  
Kanako watches her, eyebrow raised, and reaches for Izumi’s hand. It’s no warmer than usual, but still. Maybe the shouldn’t be out here; maybe she should give Izumi her shawl back.  
  
“It’ll be totally gone soon,” says Izumi, that edge creeping into her voice like when she thinks someone’s underestimating her chances of getting a hit.  
  
“I’m supposed to worry about you,” says Kanako.  
  
Izumi makes a sound, a grudging acquiescence, like getting hit by a soft changeup and taking first base. Kanako’s good with it like that, though.


	5. seira/yoko car

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> br3

The car breaks down once a week, maybe more on average. When it goes two weeks without the transmission failing or the battery dying or the engine refusing to start, Yoko’s a little bit hesitant to step in when Seira picks her up in the morning.  
  
“What, you scared?” says Seira, leaning across the passenger’s side to leer and show her cleavage.  
  
“As if,” says Yoko, stepping in and double-checking her seatbelt (though maybe it would be better if that breaks; if this thing crashes it’ll probably explode and maim her beautiful face).   
  
Seira adjusts the side mirrors again, holding the switch in place from behind because that’s been broken since before she’d gotten this thing fifth-hand from some shady dealership. (“At least it was cheap,” she’d said, and that’s at most, too; it’s literally the only thing this excuse for a car, if it even qualifies as that, has going for it.)  
  
The passenger’s seat doesn’t lean back properly; at least the back is usable, the row of seats lumpy but it doesn’t matter so much when Yoko’s the one sitting on top of Seira (sometimes she thinks Seira might want to make it more comfortable for herself but she’s probably just too stubborn to get a replacement or admit she’s not tough enough to stand it or that anything about this car is less than fine when it’s somehow still running).   
  
“I’ll model at some car show,” says Yoko. “I’ll get them to give me a new one.”  
  
“I don’t want some shiny shit like that,” says Seira. “It’ll just get stolen or wrecked. This one I don’t have to worry about that.”  
  
(No one would want this, except apparently Seira; there’s nothing to dent and scratch and rust out because it’s already happened. It’s a not-so-fine line between a smart investment and a stupid one, though, and Yoko’s pretty sure where this one falls on it.)  
  
Seira works on the car every weekend; Yoko’s used to stopping by to find her legs sticking out from under it, her hands streaked with grease and her hair all tangled up, the way she reaches for Yoko like the whole point is to get Yoko’s clean hands dirty.  
  
“Nice try, asshole,” Yoko says.  
  
Seira kisses her anyway; Yoko squeals when Seira’s greasy hands rub all over her clean pink top (at least she can take that off, though maybe that’s the whole point of this).


	6. umi/eli valentines/white

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> br4

  
There are chocolates in Umi’s locker on Valentine’s Day, from fans she supposes; they’re mostly from the ones who buy or make things for all of the school idols. It’s nice to be part of a team, this even moreso than the sports she does (it’s just her and the weapon, even though all of her teammates contribute to the overall standing; in the end she has to stand alone and hold her strength; here there are eight other girls on the stage with her, singing and dancing and supporting each other, a unit).   
  
She hasn’t made chocolates for anyone this year; perhaps she should have (Nico is still bragging about the ones Kotori had made her, even though Kotori had made boxes for everyone, each given with a smile and a lovely card). She’s still thinking about it, that perhaps something small for everyone would have been good, that she’d had time, when she's in the club room, alone for the moment when the door opens and she smells Eli’s perfume.  
  
“Umi, I was hoping to find you.”  
  
This must be about the new music, each of them learning their parts.  
  
“You’re so quiet; it’s easy for us not to appreciate all you do for us,” says Eli.  
  
Umi wraps her hand in the fabric of her schoolbag. “Please, I—”  
  
Eli waves her off, delicate, beautiful; Umi hopes she’s not staring. “Thank you, Umi.”  
  
She slides a small box into Umi’s palm and then leans across and kisses her, tasting of cherry cordial chocolate. Umi almost drops the box; she’s not moving her lips; this is all too fast. Eli winks.  
  
“Don’t tell anyone.”  
  
*  
  
It’s never mentioned again; they have no alone time together and Umi wonders if Eli is doing that intentionally, surrounding herself with student council affairs and family stuff and working on more shows and setting up practice. Soon enough it’s March; they’re doing a White Day performance as a gift to all of their fans, and all of the chocolate Nico’s still eating. The night before, Eli’s quite firm about all of them resting, even though she knows most of them are going to end up ignoring that.   
  
Umi stays up making chocolate, not as fancy as the expensive store-bought stuff Eli had bought her, but hopefully with a clear meaning. She waits in the club room at lunch, singing the new song in her head to make sure she’s got it all memorized.   
  
Eli is alone when she enters, and she smiles at Umi.  
  
“Here,” Umi says, pushing forward the small box she’s kept tucked carefully in her bag all morning. “I made this for you.”  
  
“Umi!”  
  
“And, um. In return,” says Umi, standing up and clumsily putting her hand on Eli’s shoulder, leaning forward.  
  
This kiss is better; Eli’s lips are less sweet but her mouth is more responsive and Umi’s is, too. When they break apart, they’re both smiling.


	7. nozomi/maki, memory erasure shop

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> br4

“Welcome back,” Nozomi says, leaning over the counter to smile at the newest potential customer.   
  
The customer, a young woman, startles, almost pulling back from the doorknob, and wow, she’s cute. Red hair, sharp eyes, pouting mouth, this job doesn’t pay enough but Nozomi considers the occasional good-looking person to be kind of a tip or a bonus.   
  
“I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” says the young woman, pulling off her winter hat. “I’ve never been here before.”  
  
“Oh, that’s all right,” says Nozomi, winking—and then she gets it, recognition flooding her eyes.  
  
“Sorry,” she says, smoothing over her coat. “I’m just here for a consultation.”  
  
“Sure, sure,” says Nozomi, pushing the bell to the front of the desk and the ring-for-assistance sign, which people still end up missing.   
  
She leads the customer into the back room, past the bookshelves (mostly for decoration, to make her seem well-read; truthfully the nature of the profession is just talent and a cheap certification, nothing special at all; there’s not much that needs to be taught about erasing memories).   
  
“You got a name?”  
  
“Nishikino Maki.”  
  
“Well, Maki-chan.” (Maki almost, but doesn’t quite, flinch at the familiarity.) “I’m Tojo Nozomi, proprietor of this humble shop. I reckon you’re considering having something erased?”  
  
Maki nods. ‘I think…I think it would be better if I just got a whole wipe. Clean slate. .If I kept some procedural memories, but not the other things.”  
  
She pulls out a neat stack of papers; she’s clearly done her research. This is more than just a consultation, someone springing for an erasure on a lark, a pinched-out embarrassing moment or a relationship or two wiped away. The why’s always the most interesting part, and though Maki doesn’t seem too inclined to tell Nozomi, the pack of papers will probably reveal enough.  
  
“I’ve given rights to my accounts and properties to my attorney, to be stored to me at a later date. I’ve given myself a letter for the future; I’ve left my job on good terms.”  
  
She slides the top paper over, thick and printed with the crest of a well-known firm. Ayase, and Kosaka huh? Maki’s pretty loaded, it looks like; maybe she’s a big tipper (maybe Nozomi can charge a little bit extra; she won’t know what’s on her credit card bill anyway).  
  
“Please,” says Maki.  
  
They decide to do it a few hours later, before Maki’s got a chance to chicken out. She calls her lawyer; the reason she wants a wipe isn’t clear still—Nozomi’s curious, but she knows Ayase well enough to get it out of her at a later date.   
  
Wipes are the most expensive, but they’re the easiest and quickest, the cleanest; Nozomi just presses Maki’s temple and takes her consciousness, and then from her mind grabs the memories, the data like bits on a hard drive, the surface wiped smooth, memories—piano recitals, holding someone’s hand, Easter dresses—passing through Nozomi’s own consciousness so briefly. She’s not going to pry this way.  
  
She presses Maki’s temple again to wake her; Maki blinks, sleepy and so cute, looking suddenly much younger.   
  
“Who are you?”  
  
Nozomi leans forward and kisses her. She’ll only think this lie, however it formulates in her brain, for a little bit longer, but it’s imprinted on the surface of her mind before hardly anything else. Forever, until the next time she wipes it clean.


	8. nozomicest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> br4

Nozomi had been kind of curious the first time she’d stepped across the borders of her own universe into another. Maybe in this one there was no Mu’s; maybe in this one there was a Mu’s without her. She hates it a little that she’s thinking of the group before anything else, how much it’s changed her. It’s not a bad thing; it’s not like she’d been living the greatest life as student council vice president, bothering Eli and needling her when she’d get too serious. She’s glad to have the others in her life, this close to her; she’s glad to have had the experience of doing live shows, being a school idol.  
  
The her that exists in this first universe doesn’t have any of that. She’s a full-time shrine maiden, devoting her life to traditions that are fading fast into the modern world, but all of that passes her by. She brushes her hair by candlelight; she wears it a little bit shorter than Nozomi does. Her hands are more weathered from doing work, keeping things in order; for her things are so much simpler.  
  
“You don’t envy me,” says her other self, matter-of-factly with a grin that twists at one corner of her mouth, different from the one Nozomi sees in the mirror.  
  
“I don’t,” Nozomi says.  
  
She has time to spare for the shrine, if not as much as she’d like, but she would never want to do this full-time, never devote all of her life and attention to it. This other her has had a different set of experiences, memories, friends; for her the path is winding but clear, down one road at least for now. It’s what makes it hard, sometimes, to think of this other person as herself, but easy to pull this other person closer and kiss her, lick the taste of tea from her lips.   
  
“I would never,” her other self says, lightly brushing her hands over the front of Nozomi’s school uniform, palms flat over Nozomi’s stomach.  
  
“Wouldn’t you, though,” says Nozomi.  
  
Her other self kisses her next, but doesn’t answer, eventually rolling off and lying beside Nozomi. They’re the same height; they have the same size hands, the same arms. They’re thinking different thoughts, about different things, different lives, but still it’s nice to lie here together like this. Nozomi reckons that she can’t think of better company.


	9. ranpha/rakshata, interpret

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> br4

Rakshata had found eating with chopsticks a little bit difficult at first, but she’s made the adjustment. Maybe it doesn’t look completely proper but she can lift food to her mouth, the curry and rice that tastes enough like home to make her miss it but not so much the homesick wrenches through her like a monsoon current in the rainy season. She’s not paying much mind to the utensil right now; it’s just a part of everyday life for her here. (Sometimes she worries about forgetting home, her mother’s cooking, her father’s voice, her aunts all in the kitchen.)  
  
Some days Ranpha sits next to her. She’d grown up with chopsticks but she’s from another country, too; she’s got her own things to miss or that remind her of a city far away. She speaks of it, sometimes, her voice slipping like she wants to start speaking in Chinese because it’s a better way of describing it. Rakshata knows the feeling all too well, but she can’t put it into words in any language, so she lets her hand rest on Ranpha’s bare knee and tries not to think too inappropriately about Ranpha’s legs.   
  
Ranpha steals pieces of curry of Rakshata’s plate; Rakshata’s explained that she eats too slowly a few times before she realizes that the point of this is teasing, Ranpha lifting the sweet curry to her mouth and smiling. Sometimes, she lifts her chopsticks to Rakshata’s mouth, and isn’t this supposed to be kind of intimate? Maybe, but they can hide behind the same sort of flimsy excuses that everyone here does, that they’re foreign and it means something different in their countries. It fools no one, but it’s more convenient for everyone, a way of thin satisfaction that doesn’t cover nearly as much as Ranpha’s hand on top of Rakshata’s.   
  
They came here with nothing, sentences of halting Japanese and a desire to go somewhere, be something (school idols, it turns out, is that something, a dream now closer to half-realized than not). They have that; they have the things they’ve picked up along the way, pebbles that have grown enough to weigh down their pockets in the stream. But they have each other, too, of whatever country,. They have words spoken, repeated, taught, translated several times over, the meaning disguised, perhaps lost. And they have touches, kisses, gestures, sounds that need no language or culture to interpret.


	10. kanako/izumi, hockey au

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> br5

When you’re the school chair’s daughter, getting the key to the practice rink is easy. Not that Kanako would have had a much harder time herself as the principal’s daughter, but Izumi’s ahead of her in something about hockey for once, and access to the ice is a pretty important thing. Kanako, of course, looks like she knows exactly what Izumi’s doing and smiles at her, adjusting how her skates are draped over her shoulder.   
  
It’s not like they hadn’t taken skating lessons when they were kids, only Kanako had drifted towards hockey then and Izumi towards figure skating, the solo path where it was just her and the ice, hairpin turns and calculated jumps, the same routine. Hockey had always seemed so sloppy; it still does (she thinks of the time she vowed to hate it, when Hiroki had abandoned their ice dancing routines—better for both of them to shine in their own arenas, so to speak, the right choice at the time and looking back, but even so).   
  
“Your footwork needs a little practice,” says Kanako. “Mine does, too, so it’s good we can do that now.”  
  
“Footwork?”  
  
“Don’t get me wrong,” says Kanako. “You’re an excellent skater, but you still have a figure skater’s mentality about it. Hockey doesn’t have style points.”  
  
“Figure skating doesn’t, either,” says Izumi. “It’s about the jumps you attempt, and the ones you complete—”  
  
“Whatever,” says Kanako. “You can make a hairpin turn, but when somebody’s racing down the ice trying to beat you past the goal line, you have to hustle; you have to move your legs in a certain way that you don’t quite have down.”  
  
*  
  
They argue the whole time, Kanako holding steadfast as the steel of her skate blades, well-worn; Izumi rising to the challenge. She gets a smile out of Kanako, who’s the right kind of demanding the way her old figure skating coach had been. She thinks again, about pair skates, the way her partners had dragged her back down.  
  
“Have you ever tried figure skating, Kanako?”  
  
“Not really.”  
  
“Do you want to?”  
  
“I’m not going to break my ankle trying a fancy jump,” says Kanako.  
  
“Here,” says Izumi. “Just skate backwards, and lift me when I tell you to.”  
  
They make it a quarter of the way around the rink before Kanako nearly wipes out trying to lift Izumi; Kanako’s absolutely terrible at this but they’re both grinning and Izumi feels a surge of—something.   
  
“Race you to the goal line,” Kanako says, and takes off; she’s a fucking cheater but she’d probably beat Izumi anyway.   
  
Izumi checks her into the boards when she gets there, late but a little bit quicker than she’d been; Kanako raises her eyebrows. “You’re learning.”  
  
“I have a good teacher.”


	11. umi/eli, figure skaters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> br7

Sonoda talks to herself. Eli’s seen skaters who do it before, counting the rhythms of an unfamiliar routine to themselves until they know it, but never at this level, this close to the championships. Especially because she’s seen Sonoda’s routine before; she’s seen video of her doing it at the Japanese nationals the last two years, watching videos over again so she can translate the snarky commentary to her friends.   
  
Sonoda’s one year younger; they’ve skated in the same international circuits for years, but every time one of them’s been at the podium the other’s barely missed or had some injury or skipped out on the competition. This year they’re being presented as head-to-head rivals (mostly because Nico’s out, though she’s sent Eli plenty of snarky emails) and Eli always likes to get a good idea of the competition. She’s never watched Sonoda practice alone, though, mostly because she chooses odd hours. She likes the late-night quiet, or maybe she’s still on Japan time (Eli’s already had to deal with the issues of calling her dad from here and reminding him that if he wants to tape the competition on TV that he should just let Alisa work the machine).   
  
Sonoda gets closer, and Eli realizes what she’s saying, a mantra of don’t fuck up; don’t fuck up; don’t fuck up, half-sung to the tune of the song she uses. She skates away, engrossed in her head, into the turns and jumps she’s making, one right after the other. It starts slow and then it’s bang bang bang; she barely lands before going into the next, and the next. She fucks up the landing of the triple and then spins out into another jump—doesn’t she usually do another triple then? What tweaks has she done?  
  
A double, a spin, and then a triple, one of the highest Eli’s ever seen. She ought to see if she can make it another halfway round, but Eli’s not going to give her any tips—but she will applaud as Sonoda lands, whirling around, the end of her ponytail hitting her in the face. Eli’s never looked her in the face before, and it’s like something warm is crawling all over her face—of course Sonoda’s cute; Eli’s always noticed that, but damn.  
  
“Guess I’m really going to have to bring it,” Eli says.   
  
Sonoda’s eyes seem to spark, she dips her head. “And I need to keep practicing.”  
  
Eli smiles; apparently all of Nico’s complaints about how damn practice-hungry Sonoda is aren’t much of an exaggeration (and she’s only maybe thinking about how Nico had grumbled that they’d probably get along because of that).


	12. soumomo, petplay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***WARNING: M-RATED FOR SEXUAL CONTENT***
> 
> br7

It was Rin who had made the offhand remark that the way Momo acts Sousuke should just walk him around on a leash, and the first thing Sousuke thinks when Momo presents him with a collar and a leash, new and woven, is that he’s awfully glad Rin went home for the weekend. The second thought is that thinking about Rin or about anything else other than Momo, eager in front of him, metaphorical tail wagging, is that he’s thought about this a lot since that initial remark, but he’d never thought that Momo would be the one to do it.   
  
“Please?” says Momo, hopeful, eyes wide.   
  
“Here. Bend over my lap,” says Sousuke, and Momo does as he’s told, baring his neck before Sousuke even gives the order.   
  
His breath is hot, his mouth a few centimeters from Sousuke’s knees, bare below his shorts.   
  
“Calm down,” Sousuke murmurs, rubbing Momo’s back until his breathing doesn’t come quite as fast and hot.   
  
His body must be straining under the discomfort of holding the position; he’s had to do worse with stretching and training and Sousuke’s not inclined to put him out this much.   
  
“Good boy," he says, fastening the collar around Momo’s neck, and then attaching the leash.  
  
Momo practically purrs at the praise, his ass sticking up a little bit higher into the air, right where Sousuke can run his hand over Momoi’s back and have it rise up like a hill at the end, pat Momo’s ass and refrain, just a bit, from giving it a squeeze and getting Momo a little too excited. Momo looks up, and Sousuke hadn’t said he could—he thinks about how spoiling is bad, but Momo looks so goddamn cute, his eyes focused on Sousuke. Maybe it’s not intended as cheap flattery (Momo wouldn’t), and that’s not the effect, anyway. Sousuke leans down to give Momo a kiss.  
  
“Ask next time.”  
  
“Yes, Sousuke-san.”  
  
(Sousuke thinks about the deeper, more shameful parts of his fantasies, and then things what the hell, Momo had given him this collar and leash, Momo who wants Sousuke to call him a good boy and wants Sousuke to order him around.)  
  
“Can you roll for me?”  
  
Momo nods, eager again, practically bouncing up and then down on the carpet, rolling side to side like a cat scratching its back on concrete, his t-shirt inching up and up to reveal the pale stretch of stomach. Sousuke eases down onto the floor and reaches out to stroke him there; Momo closes his eyes and sighs at the touch.


	13. robo/rion, shopping date

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> br7

If Robo’s dad’s a big-time golf fan, he’s got to watch it on TV sometimes, and Robo’s got to be able to see what people wear on the courses. Actual pros in their actual clothes, not something that barely meets the definition (and even so, only technically) Rion gives him. Still, it’s just like Robo to not pay attention to that or just never watch golf with his dad, and if their first date is a shopping date for more appropriate attire, hey. It gives Rion more than a few chances to tell Robo how cute he looks.   
  
The minefield of helping Robo pick things out, though, is one that Rion clearly hadn’t thought through enough.  
  
“Take this seriously,” he says, the first time when Robo comes back with more clothes that probably wouldn’t fit him and definitely would get him kicked out of any reputable golf course (maybe when he has a real reputation, he can get away with that shit, but even then, why should he when he can look good in something else?) and most of the disreputable ones.  
  
“I am taking it seriously,” says Robo, and, yeah, okay, that’s just him, and that sort of straight-faced, absolutely serious lunacy is part of why Rion likes him.  
  
“These would look good on you,” says Rion, pulling a pair of chinos off the rack, probably not Robo’s size.   
  
“Aren’t they a bit tight?” says Robo.  
  
“Nah, you’ll be fine. Try them and see, huh?”  
  
They’re maybe skirting the limits of golf-appropriate, but they make Robo’s ass look pretty fine, and he looks awfully good when he sticks his hands in his pockets, even with a t-shirt and his regular glasses. He eyes them in the mirror.  
  
“They’re comfortable, but do they look okay?”  
  
“More than okay,” says Rion, flashing a thumbs-up—and then Robo flashes one right back, and Rion kind of feels like having a miniature heart attack.  
  
“Let me pay,” Rion says when they get to the register. “I asked you out, so it’s my treat.”  
  
“It’s clothes, though,” says Robo.  
  
Rion shrugs. “You can spoil me next time, okay?”  
  
Robo blinks and then, briefly, what looks like a smile crosses his face. “I look forward to it.”  
  
He lets Rion buy them food at the food court, too, burgers and sodas at the fast-food place, and when they get back to his place Robo is the one who pulls Rion into a kiss.  
  
“Thank you. I had a nice time.”  
  
Rion can barely nod before Robo locks the front door in his face, but even that’s not enough to dampen his mood. He’s definitely looking forward to the next match.


	14. nicoeli, angst

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> br7

So this is it. Nico’s not naive enough to imagine that this could keep going forever, that they could perpetually stay together, just her and Eli and no outside pressure. But she’d imagined it would mount and they’d persevere, find some way to run away together or just stay happy. The two of them, and everything else a frilly little decoration that really doesn’t mean much, except that’s not the way things work (if only). But Nico had known that even this kind of thing, arranged marriages, meetings of families, would happen. Just not this fast, not like one day it’s her and Eli and no mention of an omiai and the next day Eli’s moving to fucking Russia in a month.   
  
(At least she hadn’t had the nerve to say that Omsk is close, because while Nico had looked it up as soon as she could, it sure as hell isn’t close even when you don’t factor into the way they’ve been living in the same city forever, even if it is in the Eastern part of Russia.)   
  
Her future husband is an oil baron, a man who wears suits a few sizes too big and has a haircut that’s twenty years out of date and looks way too dumb for Eli. At least if Nico were to marry him she wouldn’t have to talk to him, though; her own future plans have been settled, after all. Eli calls her rash, but Nico’s not the one who had dropped a bomb like that, and really, did she have much of a choice after that? Stay unattached and martyr herself, or marry the richest person she could find, parentally approved with enough money to bankroll all three of her siblings’ lives and buy her several big fancy houses, because if she can’t be happy she can act like it, cope with an abundance of stuff.  
  
“It’s both of our faults,” Eli says.  
  
She does not reach for Nico, and Nico does not reach for her. It’s too painful already, too much like they’re already separated, already headed toward things they do not want. Selfish things, childish things, like each other—but that’s not quite right; that’s not what it had been. Nico’s not going to undersell either of them. But adult or not, it’s frozen in the past and they’re headed towards divergent futures. Pulling on arms isn’t going to get them anywhere now.


	15. ranpha/rakshata, dystopia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> br7

There’s a reservoir on the edge of town that’s not totally contaminated yet, water that passes through the purifier and doesn’t fuck up the filters too bad. A good filter’s hard to come by, just like everything these days that isn’t rust or a shitty knockoff electronic that’s more likely to kill you than anything else (sell it to someone, get their money without a fight and get them knocked out of the fight for everything that’s already scarce).   
  
There’s another girl who comes there; Rakshata sees her sometimes. The first time they had stared at each other, uneasy, but finally the other girl had given Rakshata a tiny nod and they had trusted. Trust could cost your life, but the water comes through the filter and Rakshata hasn’t been killed yet, left untracked by radar and machines that perhaps were stealthy once when everything around them was moving lights and whirrs and sounds.   
  
(Or maybe they’ve developed true stealth technology out of all the metal waste just lying her to be looted over and over again, what had once been a valuable commodity now just a bonus when food and water aren’t sure things anymore. But if that’s the case, then Rakshata’s days are more numbered than she knows anyway.)  
  
She dreams sometimes about growing up under the flashing lights, the blare of sounds, the exhaust of machines and the sleekness of wires all the way up to the sky. The microchips still embedded somewhere in her wrist, now basically useless. She had not always lived on this island, but there are no airplanes, no helicopters, no motorboats now. If there are, if they work, there’s no one to pilot them, and she wouldn’t want to go back anyway. She wouldn’t recognize it, just as if someone had dropped herself at fifteen right here she wouldn’t be able to see it for what it is until she’d looked closely.  
  
The other girl does her hair every day, two buns on the side of her hair. She modifies her own dresses, looted from shops and bodies like Rakshata’s clothes, like everyone’s, most likely. Short skirts, slits up the side. Finding something she’s used to, her own home, wherever and whenever. Maybe next time Rakshata will talk to her, ask for a name, extend a cautious hand, because even if you can’t trust anyone here and now you don’t want to be alone, either.


	16. miki/aya, tennis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> br7
> 
> for casey

In their third year, the Sohoku girls’ tennis team makes it to the nationals. The Sohoku boys’ cycling club does not.  
  
Everything must come to an end. Sohoku’s run of more than just relevance, the six cyclists in Sohoku colors at the front of the pack. Having this, for Imaizumi and Onoda specifically—and for herself, if Miki’s being fair. For everyone else, too. This is the end of their run, falling short of the marks they’d set for themselves, falling short of expectations. Miki’s brother does not call her and she wonders if he’s disappointed in her the way she’s disappointed in herself.  
  
It’s hard to stay with dark disappointment when you’re out in the sunshine, at the front row of a tennis competition, though, when you’ve dragged yourself out of bed at the crack of dawn and had two cups of coffee and are now waiting, thinking about the texts your girlfriend had sent you earlier. About you as much about her, and this is her moment.  
  
Seeing Aya in a tennis skirt, hair pulled back, the usual anger and annoyance on her face honed and focused already, is like all the butterflies and adrenaline of seeing a Sohoku rider pull over the hill first. It’s like speeding down a hill and your voice lost behind you you’re going so fast. Her toned arms grab the racket, and Miki physically can’t feel awful anymore and she’s already on the edge of her seat, waiting for Aya to destroy her opponent, regardless of their seeding, a reverse of what she thinks the outcome ought to be.  
  
Aya blanks her in the first game. Not in the second, or in the third, but it doesn’t matter; she’s made her statement. The decisive stroke of her serve, every return hard off the racket until she runs up and softly flips it over the net, too close for her opponent to even be able to try. It’s like the way she gets when she holds Miki’s hands and squeezes them, ranting to her about some annoyance, and then that flattens out to something quieter after Miki kisses her, her hands loose around Miki’s and her expression softens out, even though it’s just as intense.  
  
Intense isn’t a great word, just an approximation of Aya. It doesn’t encompass enough, but it doesn’t have to; nothing has to when Aya’s dominating the court like this. There’s not a word for I could watch you do this forever, either.


	17. miki/aya, you're fun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> br7
> 
> for dw user babster

Smile more. Be happier; appreciate how good you have it. You would be pretty if you smiled, you know. Lighten up. Whispers meant as armless, meant as helpful, but Aya’s not here to make anyone else want to look at her. She tries to smile but it looks like a grimace on her, and why the hell should she smile when she’s annoyed? Why do people think that telling her to smile—as if they are making her aware of something to which she was ignorant—is anything but annoying? So she scowls harder; if they’re going to annoy her she can annoy them right back. If she’s doomed to be unlikeable, there are worse things in life. If she’s doomed to be avoided by everyone except the other people out there who are like her (and she can’t be the only one).  
  
Except Miki, bubbly and happy, who always smiles and is told that her smile is so pretty whether it’s in comparison to Aya or not. Miki likes Aya anyway; the other girls put an air bubble of space between them, classmates and teammates and people who don’t know her at all, but Miki breaks through it like it isn’t even there. Miki, who could reach out to anyone, who could easily wrap half the class around her finger, Miki who reaches out a figurative hand to Aya.   
  
They eat lunch alone, just the two of them; half the time Aya stuffs her sandwich into her face to avoid asking the question that worries her mind like picking at a scab.  
  
“Why me? Why be friends with me?”  
  
“I enjoy being with you,” says Miki. “Isn’t it the same for you?”  
  
Obviously. “Yeah.”  
  
“Good,” says Miki, and her smile hits Aya full-force in the chest, like a serve she wasn’t paying any attention to (there’s probably some stupid bike metaphor in there, too, but whatever).  
  
There’s really nothing Aya can do about this, just grumble about bikes and daydream about Miki, smiling that way at her, holding her hand. She’s not some dumb otaku; she’s not a daydreamer in the first place (maybe Miki’s rubbing off on her). She just wants, and that’s a little bit more than she should, maybe (probably, definitely).  
  
“Are you okay?” says Miki.  
  
Aya doesn’t mean to kiss her; she just does. But when she pulls her face away, abrupt and awkward, Miki’s smiling like that again.


	18. robotomo, childhood pals

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> br7
> 
> for dw user moetushie

  
Hiragi has no problem with his eyes, but still he rubs them very hard the first time he sees it. He doesn’t know the kids that well, but it’s more than a little bit odd to see Tomoya leaning on Robo so casually. Robo’s sitting up straight with good posture like always, but he’s leaned just so, just a little, just so Tomoya can lean on his shoulder. He’s never really considered the idea of Robo being physically close with someone, and it’s not like he’s hugging Tomoya or, like, making out with him—but is that next?   
  
He’s not going to get an answer out of Robo, so he doesn’t even try; he just waits for Tomoya to be awake and somewhere he can catch him. Practice comes, and Hiragi’s supposed to be taking it easy so he waits for Tomoya to finish in the middle of the pack on the run and jerks his head.  
  
“Captain?" says Tomoya, a little anxious as if he’d done something.  
  
“You’re good. Just, you and Robo seem awfully close.”  
  
“We’re childhood friends,” says Tomoya. “We’re just used to each other, I guess. Robo says horrible blunt things to me and I invade his personal space a little bit. I mean, it is a little weird, if you say it like that, but—”  
  
Tomoya shrugs. He seems to have thought a lot about it for someone who’s just Robo’s childhood friend, but Hiragi’s not going to push it any further. If that’s what they want to be, that’s how it is for now.  
  
*  
  
“Hey, do you think those two are dating?”  
  
Rion pulls up a chair and drops into it, pointing at Robo and Tomoya in the other corner of the club room. Tomoya’s just launched into a discussion about clubs, and Robo is nodding, the only one who can keep up with Tomoya’s sonic-boom-speed chatter (and analyzing it, too; he’ll probably show up next practice with some new weird move in his arsenal).   
  
“Tomoya says they’re just childhood friends,” says Hiragi.  
  
“Right,” says Rion, dragging out the word until it’s dripping with more skepticism than a glass of lemonade on the most humid day of the year is with condensation when it’s been sitting out on the porch for an hour.   
  
“What are you going to do, call them on it?”  
  
“I don’t know,” says Rion. “I’m just saying.”  
  
*  
  
Golf courses aren’t very suitable for furtive meetings, but there are enough trees in this one to lose Robo and Tomoya. Hiragi is about to call for them again when he sees a flash of white, a golf glove. Robo’s gloved hand reaching up to Tomoya’s face. They are making out, and they’re totally not subtle—but as long as they don’t give each other inappropriate hickeys, they won’t get kicked out of the course, so it should be fine.


	19. nozoeli, grabbin ur boob

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> br7
> 
> for dw user sexamura

Homework does not do itself (there’s a sex joke in there somewhere, but Nozomi is probably the one between the two of them who wouldn’t make it but would allude to it, a sly nod to it before telling Eli she has a dirty mind for being the one to think about it). But as long as they’re in school, they’re going to have homework, and even though Nozomi somehow finds the time to do hers between classes and before school and crammed into the few minutes of break time between the end of the class day and the beginning of practice or student council duties or any of that, Eli doesn’t. She works methodically, but comparatively slowly, and no matter how bored Nozomi gets Eli will not let herself be distracted.   
  
“Hey, Eli.”  
  
Eli ignores Nozomi, flipping the page in her book and reading the next passage, another dump of historical information, battles and wars and causes that has yet to arrange itself neatly in her mind. There’s enough space for Nozomi to reach between her chest and the book, and Eli lets her until Nozomi just grabs her boob.   
  
“I’m studying. Don’t grab my boob.”  
  
“I’m not grabbing your boob,” says Nozomi, in her best shrine maiden voice. “I’m grabbing your heart.”  
  
Eli snorts. “That’s my right boob.”  
  
“Babe. Eli,” says Nozomi, squeezing Eli’s boob, right where she knows Eli’s ticklish, and Eli very narrowly misses dropping the entire book on her own face. Nozomi squeezes again, and Eli does drop the book over the side of her bed, and rolls over to try and tackle Nozomi, get her by surprise (if Nozomi’s going to play dirty like this, then Eli’s going to fight her right back). Nozomi’s long hair is pinned back under her; she lets out a squawk as she tries to free herself, and Eli straddles her waist, pinning Nozomi down to the bed—only Nozomi looks quite comfortable.  
  
“What are you going to do to me, huh?”  
  
Eli scowls; she can feel her face heating up a bit. “I’d like to go back to studying, but since my book…”  
  
“Since you dropped it?”  
  
Eli sighs. “Since someone decided that bothering me was more important, I dropped it.”  
  
“Could have taken it with you,” says Nozomi, grin still sparkling on her face like a glitter bomb.   
  
Eli wants to kiss it off, but that never fucking works. Still, Nozomi always ends up getting what she wants, and if it’s a kiss this time, it’s not like Eli doesn’t want that, too.


	20. umi/honoka + kotori shaped space

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> br7
> 
> for casey

There is a Kotori-shaped, Kotori-sized space. Not only between them but in the school, in the classroom where her laugh would sound, on the roof where she’s smile and bring up something completely irrelevant to the situation at hand but still, somehow, helpful. Umi can’t scold Honoka for getting off topic anymore; the words sound too harsh without her partner in crime and pea in a pod Kotori right there with her. And even a brief frown is too much these days, when Honoka’s not smiling enough as it is.  
  
They feed the alpacas together in the mornings; sometimes Umi talks to them even though she knows it’s silly. She’s no substitute for Kotori, for the care she too and how she knew to look after them, but she can try at least. And she can look over to the next stall and see Honoka, pass her something over the half wall and brush her fingers over Honoka’s knuckles and pretend that everything is okay and that trying to flirt with each other is the biggest issue in their lives.   
  
They can’t be mad at her; it’s impossible to stay mad at Kotori anyway, but it’s especially impossible when she sounds so happy and hopeful over the phone, even when she’s blurting out in the middle of a sentence that she misses them, and home, and Otonokizaka. They say they miss her, too, and they don’t doubt her sincerity. But she’s happy, taking advantage of her opportunity, putting her best foot forward, so why is it so difficult for them?  
  
“It just sucks, Umi," Honoka says, slumping against her like the weight of missing Kotori exhausts her, because it probably does.   
  
“I know,” Umi says, because what else can she say?  
  
She pulls Honoka in and kisses her on the forehead; there are no other words to adequately express this. There are no other words that make any of this easier. Kotori’s got new friends and new opportunities and things ahead of her, a choice she had made that was worth the pain for her. They’re left here, with plenty, but with a choice. To let their world close over her shape or keep the wound fresh. A choice they can put off, but one that will eventually shift towards the first no matter how they try to keep it at bay, a choice that’s not a choice at all. One day, it will hurt less; right now they can hold each other up.


	21. suzaku/youzan, why are you like this

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> br7
> 
> for dw user marks

Sometimes—okay, all the time—with Suzaku, it’s pick your poison. Hang up on his stupid FaceTime call and he shows up at school, at least without his entourage this time. Just him, leaning on a golf club and looking at Youzan like he’s a prize or a pet, and why the fuck is he like this.   
  
“Hi,” says Youzan.  
  
“You-chan, first you declare this other person your rival and now you greet me so coldly?”  
  
“I’m mad at you, if you couldn’t tell. Just because we’re dating doesn’t mean I can’t have other people in the important parts of my life.”  
  
“But golf is an important part of our relationship. I was your rival first, before I was your boyfriend, you know.”  
  
Youzan sighs. Sports are complicated; it’s easy as hell to get competitive with Suzaku but their scores are half-settled, tipping in one direction or the other for now, but nowhere near as up in the open. He knows everything about Suzaku’s game (well, everything Suzaku will let him know and a few things he won’t) and it’s not like playing him is boring, but that’s not even the point.  
  
“That’s different. You’re my rival, too. He’s not there yet; you are already. It’s not like I can’t have multiple rivals.”  
  
Suzaku’s sulking now; sometimes (okay, all the time) Youzan wonders why he always has to be the older one in the relationship even if you go by birthdate Suzaku should be more mature. Then again, maturity is not at all part of the equation of why Youzan’s attracted to him in the first place, although he’s not going to tell Suzaki he looks cute pouting (for one, he’ll claim that he isn’t pouting at all).   
  
“Hey,” says Youzan, sitting down next to Suzaku.   
  
Suzaku looks up; he doesn’t even pretend to look vulnerable, which on some level Youzan can appreciate. He kisses Suzaku, quick and close-mouthed, the message very clear to him at least.  
  
“You know you need to chill, right?"  
  
“I’m calm,” says Suzaku.  
  
“I don’t want to do anything like that with that guy, okay? Only with you.”  
  
“Play me in a match?” Suzaku says, like a child asking for ice cream.  
  
“I got real practice. But I’ll meet you this weekend, okay? We can golf all day.”  
  
Suzaku doesn’t smile at that, but he leaves without complaint and with another kiss. Youzan sighs, goddamn. As troublesome as he is, Suzaku’s unreasonably himself, and that’s as close to a reason why Youzan likes him as he’s ever going to get.


	22. miki/aya, awkward crush

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***WARNING (unrequited) AGE GAP***
> 
> br7
> 
> for dw user babster

Tachibana-sensei is strict and sour, difficult (some say impossible) to please. She expects great things out of her students from the moment they pick up the racket, and will expect no less even when they still haven’t grasped the rules of tennis yet. She tells them to work harder and won’t praise them when they do. Miki is absolutely besotted with her.  
  
“She’s so mean, though,” says Onoda. “She doesn’t even like anime, and she yells so much.”  
  
“She hates bikes, too,” says Imaizumi. "Why do you like her so much, anyway?”  
  
“Well,” says Miki. “She knows the game so well; she’s a great tennis player and she’s taught me so much about it. And she believes in me.”  
  
“Doesn’t sound like that to me,” says Imaizumi. “Are you sure you’re not just imagining it?”  
  
“She does! She expects a lot out of me, and I want to deliver on that.”  
  
“Good luck with that uphill battle,” says Imaizumi.  
  
*  
  
Miki loves her friends, but they don’t understand. When it’s just her and Tachibana-sensei, one on one volleying tennis balls across the net and back, the pace increasing until Miki simply can’t keep up, it’s the best feeling in the world. Sure, she’s all sweaty and tennis clothes are not as forgiving as biking clothes, but it’s still a different kind of exhilaration that she doesn’t get from anything else. Her teacher’s focus, sharp on her like a well-honed blade, like a bike bearing down on a hairpin turn. And sure, her teacher’s harsh but she just wants to make Miki better. Maybe her style’s not suited to other players, but that's okay. It’s suited to Miki.  
  
And, well, Tachibana-sensei’s really pretty, too. It would be dishonest of Miki to leave that out in her descriptions, but she’s not totally shallow. Maybe she’s not attractive by conventional means, and maybe Miki hadn’t noticed it at first. But there’s a fierceness in her scowl, something in the way she moves after a tennis ball, graceful, that elevates all of her. Miki probably just looks like a mess when she plays, and there’s no way Tachibana-sensei sees the same thing in her. Maybe someday, if Miki picks up more than just the fundamentals of tennis from her, if she trains long enough.  
  
(Maybe someday, when she’s older, when Tachibana-sensei is holding her arm to try and ingrain the technique into her muscles, she’ll back up into Tachibana-sensei’s arms and they’ll kiss passionately. Maybe someday, but not today, when she lobs another serve straight into the net.)


	23. nozoeli, stay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> br7

Eli talks to fill the spaces of silence; she says things, words and phrases, names, because somewhere in there, in the spaces of all of that, is a set of magic words that will make Nozomi stay. It’s stupid to think that, like she’s in a room full of keys and she doesn’t know which one fits the lock, like she’s picking up the same one over and over again. Nozomi can be capricious, change her mind and change the locks at any time, but the longer it doesn’t click the longer Eli’s convinced Nozomi had swallowed the key herself. That she’s not staying here after graduation no matter what, that she’s going home and leaving Eli behind.  
  
(Follow her, part of Eli says, but would Nozomi want that? Is there space for her in Nozomi’s world? Those are the questions she should be asking, the questions whose answers Eli’s afraid of, the questions that have surrounded her own parents. You can’t force yourself into a world to which you don’t belong; you can’t take back a question like that. If Nozomi says no, then where does that leave Eli, for the rest of the time they have together? Where does that leave either of them? When time is this short is it worth the risk?)  
  
So Eli keeps whispering things, the names of the places she’s been, traced like constellations over the skin of Nozomi’s wrists, dots in a map of nonsense, not anywhere close to scale. The subway station, the park, the school, the bakery, the cafe they’d gone to on their first date; distant cities, Sapporo, Nemuro, Novosibirsk, Magnitogorsk, until she runs out of room and Nozomi’s breathing evens out. She thinks about charms and spells and magic, things that could keep Nozomi here,e the spirits that Nozomi knows better than Eli ever could, her own knowledge eclipsed in breadth and depth, a few scattered tales, a crane wife disappearing, a yuki onna, baba yaga and her house of claw feet.   
  
Eli wishes that she had one, to traipse after Nozomi, to go there and back, cross the gap until she’s a withered old hag but Nozomi is still beautiful in her mind, untouched by time. A pathetic wish, but the best her mind can manage, and Eli whispers that too into the darkness. It’s stupid, but love and desperation do stupid things to people, and she could do worse than wishing to keep Nozomi with her.


	24. makoto & nagisa, sunrise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> br7
> 
> for dw user soveryaverageme

The best part about when they were just starting out had been the makeshift everything, the feeling like it was just them, that this swim club was theirs. There had been no history to uphold, no burden of expectation except their own, of themselves and of each other. It had been refreshing, like an indoor pool on a hot day when you just want to splash around for a little bit, even though they’d all been training to swim competitively. Of course they’re never going to have anything like that, the accidental feeling of something almost like magic, but Nagisa’s not going to stop chasing it. Not until he graduates, not until after, maybe, until all of this is gone.   
  
It seems like more of it’s gone every time he looks, though. It’s not bad stuff, the expansion, new members, prestige, knowledge. It’s not bad to not have a chip on their shoulder, to not have people laugh them off, because who the hell is Iwatobi? It’s not bad to have a little bit of a reputation; it’s different, though. It makes it harder to recapture, though maybe it’s easier for the others to move on and let it go, for Makoto and Haru and Rei to get that this is how it always is (well, Rei and Haru at any rate; they’re not paying as much attention to that kind of thing).   
  
They still all hang out together at least; it’s different but it’s still fun to train all day and fall asleep in front of the television and Nagisa’s dozing off when he checks his watch and notes the time. It’s early morning by now, not late night by anyone’s definition, and this time of year it’s close to sunrise. The light from outside the blinds, shining on the windowsill, is getting a little brighter. Nagisa sits up. Everyone else is asleep but Makoto, who looks like he’s emailing or texting someone from his phone. He looks up as Nagisa gets up, and when Nagisa jerks his head Makoto stands and follows him to the door.  
  
The sun’s just coming up from behind the distant horizon; the air outside smells clean and it’s a little bit cool. Nagisa crosses his arms over his chest and looks at the streaks of pink and blue and purple running across the light grey.  
  
“It’s beautiful, huh, Mako-chan?”  
  
“Yeah,” says Makoto. “It is.”  
  
And this isn’t the feeling from before, but if it’s the closest Nagisa’s going to get it’s not bad.


End file.
